“Where is the place of understanding? Where is wisdom to be found?” —The Book of Job

Info coming at us at the speed of light—gigabytes per nano-sec—and our horse-and-buggy bio-chem brains struggle with ancient grammars, syntaxes and texts! Even our metaphors are now wretchedly overwrought: Not, “how to connect the dots,” but how to perceive, measure, record and duck the shot-gunned info-pellets rushing at our faces! No wonder the world has gone gaga—not Lady!—for predictions! “The world is too much with us,” so maybe those Mayan calendrical types knew a thing or two. Maybe Nostradamus. Maybe Cayce. Somebody must know something!

Last decade, in September, ‘07, I posted a piece called “Can the Left and Right Unite?” That was long before President “Hopey-Changey” had risen on his rhetorical pinions just long enough to foist on the gullible–one of the best bait-and-switch” acts in U.S. political history. It was a year before the Lehman Brothers “Great Recession” began; before TARP; before Europe’s implosion; before Tahrir Square; before the B.P. and Fukushima disasters; before the Tea Party and Occupy Movements; before Bin Laden’s and Saddam’s and Kim’s and Gaddafy’s demise and Representative Giffords’ near-demise; before the Supreme Court sanctified corporate, financial, electoral control; before the National Defense Authorization Act, etc.!

Four years ago, the chief divisions in the country had to do with prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—and most Americans were united in thinking “terrorists” the enemy, but not sure how to get them. Nobody had declared the American homeland a “battlefield” in the War on Terror—with all the ominous implications of such a designation.

Now, the war in Afghanistan slogs on, and the shadow of our wars in Mesopotamia will haunt us through the ages. The possibility of war with Iran is a warmonger’s wet-dream now—and the sheets are gross and soggy. Now, perhaps, it can begin to be said and heard: It was Bushwhackian, Rumsfeldian, Cheney-Reese and Powellesque, Pearle and Wolfowitz idiocy to attack Iraq; and our heedless diversion and waste of resources has helped to bankrupt us financially and morally. We’ve continued to hammer, frack and bomb our egg of a planet and now we’re dancing on a thin eggshell—and we’re mostly tap-dancing alone, not waltzing with a willing partner.

Not impressed by Obama’s card-shark, Mac-the-Knife routine, I sat out the last presidential election and urged others to purposively—not apathetically–do so, too. But that was then.

As of now, there is only one candicate for whom I’d seriously consider voting.

The main reasons are: (1) He’s the only one who talks about our over-extended “Empire.” He actually uses that word! (2) He’s the most anti-war. He talks about employing diplomacy a lot more and military force a lot less. Give brains a chance! (3) He is the only candidate who wants to abolish the Fed—and offers sound reasons for doing so. (4) He presents well-reasoned arguments, not “9-9-9” style gibberish. (5) He has argued his beliefts carefully and consistently for decades. (6) His personal life has been a model of good citizenship and family values.

I’m talking about Ron Paul, of course, and I can hear the clamor of my “progressive” (formerly, “liberal”) friends wondering if I, too, have lost my prayer beads. So, here’s my take: If we lived in a truly “free” society, where the masses had access to the skinny about how the System works, the high and growing levels of corruption and decadence in every branch of our government—federal, state, local—and if we had an educated working class, making the best-informed tactical and strategic moves to advance common values, able to work their way through the morass of media-corporate-government hype and propaganda… I’d say, Hold off, final victory will be ours!

But nothing today smells remotely like that! This is not Sweden, Iceland, Switzerland, nor is it Never-Neverland where people don’t grow old and sick and tired and die. We are a globe-straddling Empire, imposing our lifestyle and disposing of our opponents with engineered coups and revolutions, and our modus operandi is more akin to Tony Soprano’s than to the amorphous “good guys” we esteem ourselves. Surveiling and managing the planet, in ways that are often nasty and devious, we are well along the usual trajectory of past “super-powers”: expansion, over-expansion, attacks abroad and crumbling infrastructure within, and, finally, kaput, nada, nada y nada!

We’ve always been an Empire—check out latter correspondence between Jefferson and Adams. … Our nastiest business, our Civil War, had a lot more to do with managing the newly acquired Western territories—agrarian or industrial motif?—than with freeing slaves. (Do we really think recently arrived Irish immigrants wanted nothing more than to get drafted into “Mr. Lincoln’s War”? Check out the New York City draft riots for a quick refresher!)

We like to tell ourselves we’re the kind of people who only go to war for noble reasons, but the fact is… we’ve been the most successful conquerors in human history and we’ve stirred up hornet’s nests everywhere. We have been the “Now” people, barely looking back, whose forward motion has been propelled by carrots dangled by illusionists.

When the present moment is as slippery as this one, people are apt to take solace in nostalgia for simpler times or in fantasizing a better tomorrow. (When miscreants like Newt Gingrich are taken seriously as “historians,” you know we’ve got serious problems about learning from our past!) About “tomorrow”–we’re a species condemned to hope. Hope and Imagination are always “leaps of faith,” but they work better when they are informed.

Eighteenth-century “Romantic” poet Blake was on the cusp of England’s Industrial Revolution—and he didn’t like the smell of things! A visionary from childhood, seeing angels in trees, he thought anyone could be a prophet… so long as they carefully examined life whirling around them and life within. “Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d,” he wrote. Two hundred years later, our crystal balls are murky and all our messengers are suspect.

As we spin out of whirligig 2011 into the free-fall gravity of 2012, about information-overload, we may cry out with Job, “Where is the place of understanding? Where is wisdom to be found?”

The U.S. has done some terrible things in this world and some would say we’ve been in a kind of karmic blow-back since 2001. We collectively grieve, rightly so, at the horror of a woman losing her parents and three children in a Christmas-day blaze in Connecticut. How senseless, tragic and bizarre! Can a loving God permit such horrors on Christmas day? To understand the kind of tragedy that has befallen Iraqis since our invasion and continuing occupation, one would have to multiply the Stamford horror about 1 million times over the past eight years!

Not because he has done evil, but simply to test and prove his faith and goodness, Job’s children and grandchildren are killed, his cattle killed, and he is cursed with boils. And his wife asks, “Dost thou still retain thy integrity? Curse God and die.” She is empathetic; she sees her husband’s searing wounds and advises him to choose the oblivion of death instead. Job tells her to stop talking foolishness; he will suffer much more, if need be. And…, he does. And before it all ends with a show of force and a little more info—straight from the Whirlwind’s mouth!—about how things really work, Job tells his three comforters (really, intellectual tormentors), “Till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me.”

“Integrity” is the key word in this extraordinary, pre-Grecian drama. And if we are going to get through our next pivotal year intact–and, very likely, re-constituted–it is essential that we understand that concept the way it was meant back then. It is similar to our word “integer” or single unit, and its meaning has a Taoistic, Asian flavoring rather than our looser, modern sense of “general honesty” or “decency”—difficult and noble as those virtues are. Rather, the sense here is of “wholeness.” Job can no sooner remove his identity than he can remove his skin. His integrity is all-of-a-piece with whom he is—his identity, his being.

Now for Blake: the ox has his “integrity” being an ox, and the lion his just being him. Both are powerful with legit claims on the world to sustain them as they are and wish to be. You wouldn’t want to pull a wagon with two lions and you wouldn’t want to take down a wildebeast with a couple of oxen. Each has its place, each does its thing; and if the lion can lie down with the lamb, he can also lie down with the ox.

Everywhere one looks in the world today one sees tension and divisions, strife, a lack of clarity, and a constant resort to the dialogue of guns, knives and bombs. Did we fight the Cold War only to inherit a world gone mad, dividing along ancient fault-lines—Sunni/Shiite, Jewish/Muslim, Christian/Muslim–and along new ones of class? Half of all Americans are at 200% or less of the poverty level for a family of four. To put it another way, fifty percent of us are not “getting by” or just barely getting by, and most of those who are “better off” are scared as hell. And people who are scared are easily manipulated—especially when doused with fear of foreign threats. (Just ask Goebbels!)

Amidst the maya of illusions and delusions, we stumble along in our made-up world. We can only see through a glass darkly, and the glass is a fifty-inch wide-screen HDTV with surround sound—and 3-D is coming! Amidst the maya, we lose precision in our language, our discourse, our thinking, our literature, our relations with each other, with the powerful and with the downtrodden. Professor Gingrich, commenting on Herman Caine’s alleged sexual abuses, remarks that he is “sorry for he and his famly.” That’s it! I’m outta hea’! Here’s a guy who brags about being an “historian” and the two dozen books he’s written, and he doesn’t know the objective case of pronouns?

I don’t put much stock in American elections anymore. (Maybe we need “international observers”… but who do we trust?) The best one can hope for is what Ed Sullivan would call, “a really good shew.” We put far too much faith in the figurehead of our president when our history since Kennedy should have shown us that even a top banana can be easily peeled—exploded in the public square, and then re-packaged as an aberrance, anomoly, a myth. So now we’re stuck with this: Even an election victory that championed populist values of both the Left and the Right would be hemmed in by thousands of special interests and lobbysists, not to mention billions of contrapuntal bucks!

That’s what we’re up against… and any New Populist campaign must recognize those electronic realities. Nevertheless, such a campaign would mean a voice raised and heeded. It would mean a resurgence of resistance to the Neoliberal agenda of war and exploitation that both Left and Right can now oppose.

The best reason for the lion and the ox to collaborate is, ironically, to maintain their integrity! Because the Corporate State is rapidly robbing all of us of cherished core values like “live and let live,” a “helping hand,” “all in the same boat” and the “individualism” essential to thinking and acting without duress. The media mish-mash of sounds and images adds to the kaleidoscopic confusion, and no one seems to have remembered to unwind a string as we approach the Minotaur’s lair.

The real enemy of Occupiers and Tea-partyers is not the other guy, but the faraway robotic types guiding the predator drones above our global rafters. How do you make sense of it all when you’re beaten down and scared of losing your home, your job, your health, your family?

For years I was for a woman’s right to choose… and I still am. But, when I heard Paul speak of his experience as a young doctor, going into one hospital room where an aborted fetus had been unceremoniously discarded and walking down the hall into another where every effort was being made to save a mother and her life-endangered baby… I saw his opposition from another point of view, and felt the sincerity of that point of view. Now, to counter-argue, one might say that to prevent the need for abortions better sex education should be available. And that adoptions should be encouraged, etc.

Better sex education… and better every kind of education! Had we not fallen so notoriously behind in our test scores, we might not be in the mess we’re in now. Had we paid attention to the infrastructure of education, bridges, public utilities, transportation and communication, the Arts, we’d be able to get through this next hell of a year standing together, with a lot more equanimity.

“Opposition is true Friendship,” Blake wrote.

The “separation of Church and State” that Americans cherish was never meant to be a separation of morals and the State. Yet, it is our moral core, our “integrity,” that has been lost amidst the funhouse mirrors of commercialism, consumerism, militarism, ethnocentrism, more and more and more.

In this winter of our discontent, the war clouds gather and austerity miseries grind the souls of those who have no homes, or broken homes. We’re in a poisoned mine shaft and the canaries are singing. … Can we interpret their varied notes in time?

Gary Corseri has taught in public schools and prisons in the U.S., and at US and Japanese universities. His prose and poems have appeared at Dandelion Salad, Smirking Chimp, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, L.A. Progressive, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Redbook Magazine, Global Research and hundreds of other periodicals and websites worldwide. His dramas have been produced on Atlanta-PBS, and he has performed at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum. His books include the novels, “A Fine Excess” and “Holy Grail, Holy Grail.” He can be contacted at Gary_Corseri@comcast.net.

Some more good analysis of Ron Paul’s agenda, this time in a conversation with the more libertarian/conservative-leaning Jeff Rense. It addresses many of the arguments made by Dandelion Salad, Rocket, and other anti-war, anti-totalitarian activists who believe RP is the best choice.

Seriously, do you think the other Republican candidates are offering anything better? The whole discussion is on choosing a Republican nominee for the General Election to run against Obama.

Again, there are things that the president can do unilaterally and other things that he/she would need Congress’ support. Do you think that Congress is going to cut Food Stamps? They know very well that the people need to have food (bread) or they will have riots on the streets.

@Dandelionsalad, we seem to be debating under somewhat different premises here, so I’ll try and specify where I’m coming from…

First I’m not saying that I think any of the other Republican candidates are better or that people should vote for them. (On some issues they’re less bad than Ron Paul and on others they’re worse.) That’s not the issue.

Fortunately, there is a progressive Democrat running against Obama in the primary. Of course he stands very little chance of winning, but voting for him would both send a message and his campaign could be a way to build a real progressive and populist, anti-Wall Street movement. I would encourage you to check him out. He’s already on the ballot in a number of states: http://www.darcy2012.com/2011/10/10/darcy-on-the-issues

Anyway, for me the issue is whether it makes sense for progressive, pro-poor, pro-working class, anti-Wall Street, anti-oligarchy people to be supporting someone like Ron Paul who’s such an economic reactionary in the extreme.

Yes, I know that for a number of the things on his agenda he would need congressional approval. But Congress is already quite reactionary. If RP were to win the election, this would probably be even more the case, and he could claim a mandate. The social safety net has already be cut quite a lot over the past several decades, so it’s certainly not beyond the pale to think Congress would cut food stamps!

Of course I think it’s very unlikely that RP will win either the primary or the general election, but what effect does a strong RP candidacy with a large progressive cross-over have?

I would argue that it has the effect of pushing the economic discourse even farther in the reactionary direction. This has certainly been the case within the Republican party. Everyone’s scrambling to catch up with RP in terms of his economic reactionary extremism, while his anti-interventionism has received little in the way of mainstream acceptance within the party establishment.

And I would argue that at this time austerity is a very serious threat. You need only look at Europe and the agenda the austerity-pushers are imposing there.

The banksters caused the economic crisis, but they want to make the poor and middle classes pay the cost of it.

How can we effectively agitate for progressive economic demands like NO AUSTERITY, TAXING WALL STREET, NO FORECLOSURES, and NATIONALIZING THE FED TO PAY FOR RECOVERY when we’re supporting such a reactionary? This sends the message that these issues are unimportant or secondary.

If you want to build a mass-movement though, for everyday working people these are the most important issues – jobs, economic security, etc. With a populist program you can build something large, diverse, and powerful.

Yes, it’s absolutely important to be anti-war and anti-totalitarian, but this shouldn’t mean having to endorse someone with an austerity agenda of genocidal proportions.

The issue is choosing the best Republican candidate in the Republican Pres. Primary Election.

The man running against Obama on the Dem. Party ticket is a total unknown candidate, is not in the debates (there are no Dem. Party debates) and has zero chances of winning against Obama. Also, I’m not a Democrat so will not be voting in the Dem. Party primary or going to the caucus. For those who are Democrats, choosing “uncommitted” is a choice to consider, or the man you suggested as a protest vote.

Using the lesser evil standard, RP might draw with the other Republican reactionaries. Under the “effective evil” standard it’s harder to say. Obama is a more effective evil than McCain would have been, since he has left-cover and black-cover. RP has freedom-cover and peace-cover for his radical austerity and union-busting agenda. Of course RP stands little chance of being elected, but his channeling of generally progressive-leaning young people, hipsters, radicals, hippies, alternative-people, etc. into much more reactionary economic agendas does real tangible damage and gets in the way of building a movement around class-based populist economic demands.

“I’m not a Democrat so will not be voting in the Dem. Party primary or going to the caucus…For those who are Democrats…”

Me, a Republican? I don’t think so. I’m a Socialist as I’ve mentioned many times on this blog.

I also don’t buy into the lesser than 2 evils, as I don’t vote for anyone “evil” (war criminal or a would-be war criminal).

In this election season, we (progressives/Independents, etc) have the opportunity to select a candidate that is against the Military Industrial Complex. Also, a person that would restore our civil liberties and end the “war on drugs”. Those issues are very important.

Anyway, it seems like this conversation is not really productive and just going round in circles at that point, so we’ll probably just have to agree to disagree on this one. I hope though that your blog will continue to focus on important economic issues like fighting against austerity, supporting the Wall Street Sales Tax (AKA “Tobin,” “Robinhood,” etc.), stopping foreclosures, nationalizing the Fed and using its credit for recovery (infrastructure, jobs), and so on. :-)

D.S., I think it’s reasonable to have the conversation now, since RP has published his political and economic program. It’s certainly fair to discuss and debate all of its content.

I think it’s vital that we remember just how potent of a weapon economics can be. As bloody as the past fifty years have been in terms of war, there were actually a lot more people killed by starvation and deaths from easily preventable diseases than those killed directly by guns or bombs.

It’s easy to lose sight of the human face behind the numbers. When they talk about billions being cut from programs like Medicaid, Food Stamps, and WIC – which millions depend on for their very survival – we’re talking life and death issues here.

Austerity right now is a VERY REAL THREAT. Banksters are taking over European governments and destroying their social safety nets. These very people who caused our economic crisis and have continually been bailed out and subsidized are demanding brutal cuts which will wreck havoc on society, the real economy, and human lives.

Here in the US, both Obama and the Wall Street Dems and the reactionary Repubs are calling for massive cuts and neither support any real FDR-type recovery program which would actually improve things instead of making us fall deeper into poverty and depression.

RP’s austerity agenda is one which the other Repub candidates also advance, though he takes it to more of an extreme. Is he the “best” of the GOP contenders? Hard to say, since they’re all quite bad. He’s better on some issues but worse on others.

Yes, it is still the primary, but he’s considered a front-runner. It’s true that if he does win the presidency then he’ll have to work with congress, but if RP wins the election there will likely be even more austerity-pushers in congress than there are now and he’d be able to use his “mandate” to demand even more brutal cuts.

I certainly can understand the concerns about totalitarianism and the loss of civil liberties, those are very real and dire threats in today’s world.

But I would ask civil libertarians to consider a couple things:

1. In the midst of a global economic depression, RP would cut much of what’s left of our social safety net and at the same his spending cuts would further swell the ranks of the unemployed. This would mean countless millions cast into destitution.

This is a recipe for enabling a fascist (or other totalitarian) takeover.

2. RP (in spite of his general “states-rights” stance) would federally impose “right to work” laws – effectively making it impossible to maintain labor unions. A general strike would be one of our last lines of defense against tyranny, but RP would make such resistance much less feasible.

I could go on even longer, but I would simply encourage readers to listen to the broadcast I linked to (from KPFA’s “Guns and Butter”), consider the arguments made and decide for themselves. D.S., maybe you could publish a link to that broadcast as well?…

I should note that the guest on that program, Webster Tarpley, is certainly no shill for Obama or the Democratic Party establishment. He’s been an outspoken opponent of Obama from day 1, a leading 9/11 Truth activist from day 1, and a longtime opponent of imperialism and the finance-capital oligarchy behind it.

Finally, as to your question of who I’ll vote for the the primaries, I would have liked to have voted for someone like Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur, DeFazio from here in Oregon, or one of the other candidates on http://primaryobamanow.com Unfortunately there’s not (at least not yet) any real primary opponent to Obama. I’ll probably end up voting “uncommitted” – likely just a protest vote, but with enough “uncommitted” votes someone else could theoretically be nominated this summer.

In the meantime, I think it’s vital that a mass-movement be built around a specific program of demands. Let’s hope that one can emerge which unlike “Occupy” (thus far) will not be dead-set against leadership and will not value empty rhetoric above serious focus on real issues. Then that might actually become a real threat to “the 1%.”

Abe — if you get a knock on your door some time next year after the election and you are taken away like joseph K , you will wish to God that you had voted for Ron Paul who would have prevented your abduction by your own government .
you think that i am just sneezing here , it would do you well to google in japanese amercians 1942 interment camps , and wake up and smell the Kafka.

Abe is 100% correct. People disappear in South American counties governed by Ron Paul-style governments. Rocky Alexander running on the Justice Party slate might be come viable. Ron Paul is against everything that will preserve any semblance of an opposition to disastrous Austrian school plutocracy.

If you lived in Chile you wouldn’t say that, unless maybe you are one of the 1%. Sorry “counties” should have been “countries”

The statement makes perfect sense; you don’t comprehend it. It was a reply to Rocket’s nonsensical fearmongering.

You and he are trying to divert discussion to irrelevant details. It’s telling that he thinks opponents to Ron Paul are fans of Beck and that we all should unsubscribe from your blog. You don’t need allies like him. You are much bigger than that.

You would be better served to discuss the relevant facts rather than try to divert the discussion to arguments you think you can win. If you goal is truly to create a coalition between left and right, you need to open your mind.

Describing Paul’s platform as being like Chile with disappeared citizens is fearmongering, in my opinion.

I don’t believe I discussed irrelevant details.

I stand on my belief that Paul is the best Republican candidate. Who would you vote for in the Republican Primary election? Is Romney a better candidate? Santorum? Gingrich?

I have a very open mind, that’s why I support Paul even though I’m a Socialist. It’s not because of his economic policies, but his foreign policies. And the restoration of our civil liberties (very important).

The author rightly saw Obama as a bait-and-switch. I call bait-and-switch on Ron Paul. RP’s austerity plan is more severe than that of Heinrich Brüning, which bankrupted Germany and paved the way for Hitler taking power. RP calls for deflationary monetary policy, which would force debters to pay back the cheap dollars they borrowed with expensive dollars. He also calls for union-busting measures which would destroy one of the only organized forces left in this country to resist fascism and totalitarianism.

Abe, Ron Paul would need Congress’ support to enact his economic policies. Unilaterally he can bring the troops home, etc. and restore our civil liberties.

Remember this is the PRIMARY Election, not the General Election. Paul has to secure the nomination from the Republican Party before becoming the nominee. Then we can continue the conversation during the General Election campaign. But right now, Paul is the BEST candidate running for the Republican Party in the Primary.

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